Friday, August 31, 2012

At the office: Today was the annual company summer picnic, and I thought the event was a success. The theme was a Hawaiian luau this year, and we had the leis and food to go along with the theme. Many of my co-workers brought their kids to the event, and many of them around the age of 1 and below (we had a recent baby boom, obviously). The menu was meatballs, chicken, Hawaiian pork, potato salad, and 2 kinds of cake (pineapple upside down and coconut chocolate cake? I'm not sure since I passed on dessert). The picnic was over around 2 PM, and we were dismissed after that. I volunteered to take the recycling home with me, and now my

blue recycling bin is totally full of water bottles, soda cans, and bear bottles. The neighbors will think I had quite the party. After the picnic, I took a celebratory end-of-the-week nap in my nicely ACed house. ::sigh of relief::

Article: For the past month, I've been working on an article to submit for publication in a journal. I submitted it after my nap, and now I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be accepted. I'm the only author, so it'll be a nice thing to put on my resume.

RJ: I didn't have anything defrosted for dinner, so I went to Crisp and Juicy for a chicken dinner. RJ happily hopped onto the dining room table to volunteer to help me eat some.

Movie: I had a 50 cent off coupon for Redbox so I rented This Means War. Meh, it was a cute movie, but nothing spectacular that I'd want to see again. I've definitely seen better romantic comedies.

Thursday, August 30, 2012

New AC Unit: Ok, knock on wood, this is the end of my AC woes. I've had the inside unit replaced in June, and then today, I had the outside fan unit replaced. So, this is what it feels to have AC in my house? It's such a foreign feeling, I've almost forgotten what it feels like, ha ha. The time frame that I was given was between 11 and 4 today, and the service men showed up around 2:45 PM (not 4:20 PM like last time). Within an hour, they had the unit installed and I took a celebratory nap with AC flowing through the house. It gave me a great sense of satisfaction to see the thermostat go from 84 degrees to 78.

Sears woes, continued: The people from Sears have been taking their sweet time getting back to me regarding my horrible experience with them doing my air vent cleaning. I called them yesterday to follow-up since they hadn't called me back in the 24-48 hours they promised me, which was about 2 weeks ago. Nope, not acceptable. The lady on the phone had the audacity to a) act like she didn't know what I was talking about (hello, did you people take notes the last time I called?) and b) tell me that someone would call me ASAP. I took the complaint to Twitter to see how Sears would respond and it turns out that the corporate office and local office both called me to apologize and try to resolve the problem. I'm not going to pay for an expensive UV light mold prevention system if y'all's technicians aren't certified to identify mold. I'm leaning towards asking them to uninstall it and refund me the cost. I'm also not going to take any crap about "You'll have to pay for a restocking fee." You already installed this gadget in someone's house. Are you really going to reinstall it in someone else's house? I'm confused. The excitement never ends...

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

AC:The AC people are coming on Thursday to replace the unit outside. YAY! I'm not sure how much longer I can stand the heat in my bedroom at night. The opened windows and ceiling fan don't seem to help at all.

At the office: I got an email from the Executive Director today saying that casual Friday wear has been extended through September. The peasants rejoiced. I guess it would be too much to ask that the policy was instilled indefinitely, but I'll take what I can get.

Card:Here's my take on Fall-To Layout #205. I had some extra squares leftover from when I was making this card, and I didn't want them to go to waste.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

This afternoon, I got an Etsy convo from a previous buyer asking for some extra embellishments and a thank you card using the same embellishments. I was worried that I wouldn't have the right dimensions because I didn't record them, but thankfully, I took picture of them on top of my craft mat, which has a ruler. Here's the card that I made. I like how the gingham matches the color of the dress.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Yard sale finds: I saw a listing on Craigslist this morning for a huge craft yard sale. She advertised lots of crafty goodies like stickers, paints, rubber stamps, wooden letters, etc. I zoomed over there promptly at 9 AM and it looked like other people had seen the listing as well because I was not the first person there. One lady had already snatched up a bunch of the stamps. :P Oh well. The owner had a huge box of stickers and embellishments so I dug through that for a while. I felt it was important to be selective because I only had so much cash on me anyway. Everything (new in package) in the picture was $17 total, but the owner's husband let me get away with it for $15. She had a ton of glitter...too bad I'm not a glitter person. I made this card for a friend and used it as an opportunity to use one of the big Heidi Swapp flowers.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Spin class: On my day off today, I went to spin class in the morning (I haven't been since Tuesday night last week, eek). I was looking forward to Anna's class, but unfortunately she was not there. There was a substitute instructor instead, but I liked her music so it's all good. Also, Janice (Tuesday's instructor) wasn't there to give me a hard time for disappearing for a while.

Shopping: I went to Target to see if I could get any clothing deals (and also get some bread and jelly). I scored 2 dresses at $12.48 each, hooray!

Family: I went to my parents' house earlier to talk to Dad about a refinancing deal that my mortgage guy proposed. I also taught Dad how to Skype by downloading it to his iPad. How do you explain something that just comes naturally to you? I've only recently started Skyping with my sister (the webcam on my new computer broke, so I returned the computer, ugh) and I thought it was an intuitive app to use, but I had to explain how you call and hang up on someone and how to increase/decrease the volume. I hope he starts using it more to talk to Julie "on the phone."

Thursday, August 23, 2012

At the office: I sent off my article to 3 reviews yesterday to get some feedback, and this morning I got comments from one of them already with minor changes. Whew. 1 down, 2 to go. I asked my boss for the day off tomorrow as a reward to myself for getting this far in the writing process. The plan is to turn it in next Friday. Then things will be out of my hands!

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

At the office: My boss gave me her feedback on the article that I was tasked to write for an upcoming supplement. I almost fell out of my chair at first glance of the paper...there were lots of comments in Track Changes. When I looked closer, they won't be too difficult to fix or add more information. My biggest weakness in the paper is that I write like I'm assuming that the reader knows what I'm talking about, so I have a tendency to leave out some of the details. I can't wait to turn this paper in on August 31. I think I might have to celebrate by tacking on a couple of vacation days after, especially with Labor Day in that weekend.

Card: Here's the card that I made for today. I was inspired by banners, can you tell? Truth be told, I had to do a little card surgery on this one. The yellow piece of patterned paper had a little cut on it on the right hand side. While it wasn't blatant, I knew it was there, so of course, I had to find a way to fix it! I sliced off that edge of the paper and attached a small strip of the pale green paper to make up for the space left behind. Whew! I'm glad that the cut wasn't bigger because then I would have had to start all over again!

Monday, August 20, 2012

Yesterday, the local Taiwanese community wanted to hold a memorial service for my uncle who passed away on July 17. There was quite a crowd, so much so that several people in the back had to stand during the eulogies. About 10 people were asked to say a few words, and I thought it was cool that they all had similar things to say about my uncle. To me, that means that he was a very consistent person, someone who didn't treat people from one part of his life different from another. Common themes were his love for his family, friends, and county...while he was very budget-conscious to himself, he was very generous to people he cared about. Most of the eulogies were spoken in Taiwanese, and I could only understand about 70% of what they were saying. I started to tear up a little during the ones in English because those, I got. My cousin's wife silently handed me a tissue, and I was thankful that she did because I wasn't expecting that I'd get that emotional. After the eulogies, there was a song played and Dad got up to say a few words as a family representative and thanked the community for the outpouring of support during this difficult time. I was a little afraid that he'd get a little choked up, but somehow he managed to get through it. Good job, Dad.

Friday, August 17, 2012

I had my AC unit that's inside the house replaced in June. I thought that would have been the end of my AC woes, but I was sorely mistaken. The air that was circulating the house was still not cool enough, which meant that the AC continually ran in order to get to the desired temperature. My electrical bill was proof of that. The power company guy that came to install my new digital thermostat commented on how warm my house was and advised me to get the refrigerant level checked in the outside unit.

I was able to get an appointment for today, and they said that the service man would show up between 11 AM and 4 PM. Another work-from-home day. Because of all the stuff that happened this week, the only day that I went to the office this week was Tuesday! Anyway, 4:05 PM rolls around and the guy hadn't showed up. I called the AC company, got an answering machine, and left a voice mail. Then I called the home warranty people to ask if they could help me. The lady called up the AC company and reported that they were going to show up in about 5-10 minutes.

And they did. I was a little hesitant in letting them into my house because they looked very scrubby. They looked at my inside unit and outside unit. After the inspection, they confirmed my suspicions: low refrigerant and there's a leak that they can't repair. "You'll have to get that unit outside replaced." My heart sinks. I have spent so much money on this house this summer! UGH! Fortunately, the estimate that he gave me wasn't too bad. Being comfortable in this house is worth the money. After all this, I better have the cleanest air in the neighborhood!

I'm glad that I didn't give them a hard time about being late. I guess the other appointments had been running late. "It's really hot and people are angry." It kinda reminded me of this quote: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."- Plato

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Dental appointment: I have a clean bill of dental health, yay! The original appointment was going to be on August 30, but they were able to fit me in earlier. The catch was that my dentist is currently on vacation and his father has been filling in for him. What? His father? Um, that's interesting. I have no idea that my dentist's father was a dentist as well. I guess there's a family business going on here. He must have been around 80 or something. Anyway, he was a very nice gentleman and complimented me on my teeth: "It is a real pleasure to work with a nice set of teeth." My orthodontist would love to hear that, and my dad since he spent a pretty penny on braces for me.

Family: My uncle is going to back to Taiwan on Saturday, so I went to another uncle's house for a good-bye family dinner. Good thing since I don't have much food in my refrigerator, heh.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

I hate Sears: I called several HVAC places today to get a second opinion on this UV mold prevention gadget that I had installed by Sears on Monday when I had my air ducts cleaned. The service man told me that I had mold growing in the coils. What I didn't know until today was that it's unlikely that there would be mold growing in only 2 months time. He showed me this grainy picture to convince me and then used a scare tactic to persuade me to install the machine. The other thing that I didn't know was that you have to be certified to be a mold inspector, and guess what, Sears technicians are NOT certified to identify mold. I feel that I got jipped. I'm sure the UV light is a helpful thing to have, but I'm not sure it was completely necessary since I hadn't been feeling sick or anything.

The Sears supervisor is supposed to call me back within 24-48 hours so we can remedy this problem. They told me that they couldn't uninstall the machine (we'll see about that!), but could offer me a discount. I was also sure to let them know that I was not happy about the condition they left my house. I will not be using Sears again.

The electric company came to install a new digital thermostat, and the first thing he says is, "Is your AC running?" My heart sinks. Well, yes, but I don't think my house is getting cool enough. "Your unit might be running low on refrigerant." I called the home warranty people, and they are sending some one over on FRI. Gawd, the amount of work that has been done to this house this summer is ridiculous. I guess that's the downside of being a homeowner! This is just exhausting. This is definitely a lesson learned to not give into scare tactics and to be more well informed before getting services done to the house. :(Card: For today's card (using CPS #278 as inspiration), I dry embossed half of a card base as to not let it go to waste. I stamped on the other half of it, but didn't like the resulting image. Into the recycle bin it goes!

Off to the dentist tomorrow for a regular check up. Wow, the fun never ends this week, does it?

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Air vent cleaning: Oh, house woes. I had Sears come and clean my air vents on Monday, but then I ended up also having them clean out my dryer vent and install some covers on the outside to prevent birds from building nests in the outside vents. They also installed a UV mold prevention system in my heat pump, which was very expensive, and now I'm not really sure if it was necessary. The workers left some screws around the house (what if RJ or I stepped on any of them?!) and some debris outside the house, which I'm not too pleased about. I will give them a piece of my mind tomorrow. I hope I won't have to use my sassy voice.

I'm having the power company install a programmable thermostat on WED, so I'm hoping that experience is less painful on my wallet.

RJ: Because of the work that was being done on the house Monday, my boss allowed me to work from home. I caught RJ on the couch in a "sea otter position." I wish my work days were that relaxing.Gummies: My cousin gave my mom some European gummy bears. Interesting.

Cards: My friend Page sent me a picture last night that really warmed my heart. It's a picture of all the homemade cards that I sent her over the years.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Movie: This afternoon, I went to see The Dark Knight Rises with Beth. I would have to say that this one was my favorite out of the Christopher Nolan directed ones, mainly because the others didn't have a female lead kicking some major butt. After the movie, we went to Noodles and Company and went back to her place to hang out with her dog Lily, who was very interested in my food and even the empty container of food.

#smalldogproblemsBudget-friendly tip: I tried this DIY pore strip tip that I found on Pinterest today. I can't say that it helped clear out my pores but it did leave my skin feeling really smooth and not oily. When I try it the next time, I'll lay it on a little thicker on my face to that I can peel it off easier. I will also be careful to avoid my eyebrows. A few eyebrow hairs came off in the process. Heh.

Friday, August 10, 2012

RJ: Oh yes. It's that time of year again. It's time for RJ to visit the vet for his regular check up and get an updated rabies vaccine and distemperment shot. Unlike Ginger, he didn't need any coaxing to get into his carrier, but he wailed all the way there and wailed all the way home. I wish my doctor appointments would last as long as his did: weight, temperature, ears, eyes, 2 shots and he was outta there. I was hoping that he wasn't going to get fresh with the vet technicians and vet because that'd be really embarrassing. Fortunately, he was well behaved, only clinging to the vet examining table and trying to wiggle out of the vet's hands as she was examining him. Unfortunately, he's gained a few pounds so we're going to have to a) limit his food intake a little more and b) get him some restricted calorie food.

Food and Movie: My friend James came over for dinner tonight, and ensure that I didn't have a repeat chicken marsala fiasco like I did last time where the chicken turned out too dry, I tried a new recipe today (Recipe #11 of 2012)...crock pot chicken parmesan. No browning of chicken necessary. Yum! Afterwards, we watched the movie The Descendants that I got at Redbox. I thought the movie was sad and a little longer than it should be, but the acting was great. I guess you can't go wrong with George Clooney.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Here's the card that I came up with tonight. I wanted to use another one of my border punches that I got from Marshalls last week and some scraps that I had near my paper trimmer. I had the bottom panel all set, but then my creativity came to a halt when I was trying to decide what to do with the remaining "white space." I decided on doing some tone-on-tone stamping to add some subtle visual interest. I thought I was going to do some white embossing for the card, but then I realized that having something cream colored would be better to match the cream in the pattered paper. Fortunately, I had some off-white colored alphabet letters from Basic Grey. It was great to dig them out of the bottom of my crafty goodies box and use them.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

I went over to my cousin's house for dinner last night to celebrate his birthday. His parents, who are visiting from Taiwan cooked a big dinner for us that included salad, noodles, pork, salmon, chicken, etc. For my contribution, I made some chocolate cupcakes (Recipe #10 of 2012) with cream cheese frosting. The recipe yielded 16 yummy cupcakes for me, enough for my family and some leftovers to share at the office.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

At the office: My former officemate Jennifer came to the office today to visit, with her new baby Caitlin in tow. It was pretty wild to see Caitlin in person, since before, it's just been pictures. I had just gotten used to the idea of Jennifer being pregnant and *poof* she has a real baby now! She went on maternity leave in March, so it's been quite a while since I've seen her but she looked great. I can't wait for her to come back to work in a few weeks. I get the sense that she can't wait either because she mentioned something about missing conversations with grown-ups.

Card: Here's my take on CPS #277. I loved the little fabric flower that I used in yesterday's card, so I decided to use another one from a different set.

Monday, August 6, 2012

I'm a little behind in my card sketch challenges, so here's my take on CPS #276. I was going to use the "congrats!" panel of this card for another card, but I decided to save it for another time because the colors didn't match well. However, I thought the yellow would be a great compliment to the brown and red. The fabric flower was tacked on at the end for some visual interest and feminine touch. I'm really liking the EK Success punch that I bought last Friday. It punched through the yellow cardstock like butter. The alphabet stamps were also a nice investment because a) I love that font and b) you can definitely create your own sentiments with the set. Love it.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Shopping: On a whim, I went to TJMaxx after spin class this morning (by the way, Janice's substitute Sheila always plays a mix that has a theme to it and you have to guess what the theme is. Today's theme was the Olympics, gold, silver, being "unbelievable" UNH!). I wanted see what their craft punch situation was and much to my surprise, there weren't that many punches, but I did find a few My Mind's Eye 6 x 6 paper pads that I liked. I started out with 6 in my hand, but then I put away two of them because a) I didn't want to be greedy and b) they weren't really my style...Everyday Flair wasn't bright enough and A Happy Heart was too orange-y. If you're curious as to which paper pads I got, you'll have to enlarge the image below by clicking on it. I also came away with a new hairbrush because the rubber tips of mind have come off and the unprotected bristles really irritate my scalp and a Martha Stewart punch all of the page punch called Diamond Rings Pattern. I haven't used on of these before, but since it was $4 (full regular price $21.99), I figured it was worth a try.

Card: For tonight's card, I wanted to use my new Martha Stewart punch. I felt like it took a little more pressure to get it to punch, but once I got the hang of it, it was easy peasy.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Lazy Saturday: I definitely took advantage of my lazy Saturday to do some laundry,read my book, and catch up on sleep. I went out with my family tonight to celebrate my uncle's and cousin's August birthdays.

Card: For today's card, I decided to try out one of my new punches, the lattice chain one. I love it! I'm glad that I have one of those glue pens since the design is on the intricate side. Regular liquid glue would have probably made a big mess.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Haircut: Unfortunately, I was not able to go to my FRI morning spin class because I switched my usual work-from-home day from FRI to MON this week. My boss was going to be in the office today so I wanted to make sure that I was available in case she had any last minute things to talk about before heading to the airport in the afternoon. She didn't, but that's okay. I was able to get a bunch of things crossed off my to-do list. Once she left, I went to Hair Cuttery to get a haircut. I saw a sign for $16 haircuts in the window a few days ago and made a mental note to investigate further. Even though I loved the haircut that I got back in March, it's just too expensive. The haircut, shampoo, blow dry and generous tip all together doesn't even come up to the cost of the actual haircut that I got at the March salon! I walked away feeling victorious that I got a haircut AND I saved some money. The haircut is probably a little shorter than I'd like, but that's the great thing about hair...it grows back!

Shopping: The Hair Cuttery is in the same mall as the Marshalls so I went in to look for the punches that people have been showing off in their recent haul videos. There was quite a collection! You should have seen me climb the shelves to get to them since they were on the very top rack. I tried to find a step stool so I wouldn't look like a 5-year-old misbehaving, but no luck there. After a few tries and risking my life, I got 3 EK Success punches. They had some Martha Stewart ones, but a) I liked the EK Success ones more and b) they are easier to store. Each was $3.99 ($15-$18 regular price)! The 3 that I got were Parisian, Retro Flower, and Lattice Chain.

::evil laugh::Dinner and family time: After work, I went to Panera to meet up with Jessie, my friend from grad school. We had a 2-hour girl talk, and then I went to my parents' house since I hadn't been there since Monday. What? No one was home! I then went to check out my cousin's house. Again, no one was home! I went to my uncle/aunt's house...yay, they were home watching Brian Williams's news broadcast. I stayed there for about an hour and went back to check if anyone was home at my parents' house or my cousin's house. I could see through the window that my aunt/uncle visiting from Taiwan (my cousin's parents) were home so I rang the doorbell and hung out with them for about an hour until it was time to check on my parents' house one more time. Third time's the charm! It's a good thing that we all live close together. Otherwise this running around would not have been possible.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

At the office: I checked my phone for work emails before I left the house this morning and found one from my boss. It was a request to type up two documents. The originals were scanned PDFs so they couldn't be easily copied and pasted into a new MS Word document. Fortunately, I recently installed MS Word to my new computer a few days ago, so I decided to do this assignment at home before heading to the office. I finished the request in about 10 minutes, uploaded them to the SharePoint site and sent her an email with the link.

I got the following email later on in the morning, while she was taking a break from her meeting: "You are so good to me. We will call you first for lunch leftovers." I think one of the keys to a good manager is knowing how to best motivate and reward your staff. I was a happy camper this afternoon, writing up my article and eating meeting leftovers.

Card: I wanted to use a Pebbles stamp set that I bought a while back, but hadn't used yet. The cake image caught my eye. I wish it was more versatile in that it could be used for any type of cake, such as wedding AND birthday, but the flower makes it look more wedding-y. That's okay though. I went in the wedding card direction because of it.